Soccerphile Editorial - March 2013
World Cup Qualification Conundrum
Serious consideration must be given to reorganising the manner in which European national teams will qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia if the Uefa qualifiers over the past international break are any guide.
The argument that the lesser teams in Europe benefit from regularly rubbing shoulders with the legitimate World Cup hopefuls is beginning to wear a little thin with some detractors of the current format after England and Poland thumped 207th-ranked San Marino to the tune of 13 goals for and none against in the past two matches.
Similarly, Andorra lost their sixth straight qualifying game in Group D, although they have only conceded 17 to San Marino's 29 in six matches, including relatively close 2-0 defeats to Turkey and Estonia over the past week.
Malta and the Faroe Islands have also lost all their matches in this current campaign for Brazil 2014.
However, the statistics of San Marino are particularly difficult to comprehend for many of those wishing for a revolution in the Uefa qualifying format for Russia in five year's time.
Tuesday night's 5-0 loss to Poland was their 52nd straight loss in international competition. Indeed, the minnows have never won a match in World Cup or European Championship qualifying. They have only ever won one game, beating Liechtenstein 1-0 in a friendly match in April 2004.
However, this dismal record could be overlooked if only manager Giampaolo Mazza, albeit with wafer-thin resources available, were able–or indeed willing–to send his team out to battle towards a potential upset.
Instead, against England last Friday, San Marino played with one striker and never managed a shot on target in 90 minutes, making the benefits of such a lopsided match-up particularly hard to acknowledge.
There is some confusion too as to why Uefa continue to allow all 53 of its member countries to enter qualifying at the first group stage rather than filtering out the weaker sides in a preliminary competition in one guise or another.
Apart from the single-round South American section, which comprises just nine teams in this campaign given Brazil's qualifying absence, Europe is the only confederation that welcomes all its members into the main round of qualifying.
Asia, Oceania, Africa and North America all demand that lesser ranked opponents effectively playoff for the right to meet the continental powerhouses in the league format and the opportunity to spring the ultimate surprise by actually reaching the quadrennial finals.
So, while San Marino are 99% likely to finish this latest qualifying campaign with 10 consecutive defeats and zero goals to their name, Oceania minnows American Samoa were creating history in their section by recording their first victory since entering the international scene in 1994.
The tiny, unincorporated island territory in the South Pacific ended a run of 30 successive losses - including a world record 31-0 defeat against Australia in 2001 - by beating Tonga 2-1 in the pre-qualifying phase.
The fact that they still failed to reach the subsequent round of World Cup qualifying did not seem to matter one jot judging by the huge celebrations of all those involved.
The question must now be asked as to whether it is equitable for a place in the finals to come down to goal difference, as it may do for England and Montenegro in Group H, which can be dependent on a number of external factors such as weather and pitch conditions, when Uefa's 13 World Cup spots could just as easily be decided by slimming down the main qualifying phase with a 16-team preliminary round of eight home-and-away ties.
Those eight winners could then join the 37 stronger national teams to create nine groups of five teams each, with the same format as is currently employed used thereafter.
How that could possibly be detrimental to the development of Europe's weakest nations is hard to understand.
Indeed, one wonders whether San Marino fans would swap 10 straight losses every two years for the occasional win, even though it might be against Slovenia rather than Spain.
Buy tickets for soccer matches around the world